


Settling an Argument

by tigersinlondon



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Confessions, Designations Congruent With Things references, Dorks in Love, Drift Compatibility, Ghost Drifting, Idiots in Love, M/M, The Drift (Pacific Rim), mako mori is a shameless enabler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 15:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19176205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersinlondon/pseuds/tigersinlondon
Summary: “Well why don’t we try it again with somesafeequipment instead of yourgarbageexcuse for a Pons system and sort this out with people who actually know what they’re talking about!”Drift compatability is complicated, and using the drift to dive into a hive mind with a half-dead alien doesn't give a truly accurate reading on how compatible two people are. After the Earth has been saved, Newt and Hermann take the opportunity to find out.





	Settling an Argument

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this about 3 years ago as a 'quick' ficlet and now it's 2019 and I've mostly moved on but I still love these dorks, so here ya go! Thanks to tumblr users joestrummen and crunchywrites for beta'ing, despite the fact that they don't go here. Love yall.
> 
> Pacrim Uprising don't interact.

They argue over the possibility of Drift compatibility for days. They both know it’s a sliding scale, not an absolute measure, but Hermann keeps pointing to his own haemorrhaged eye, dragging the bottom lid down sharply to emphasise his point, and Newt keeps chiming in with variants on “humans aren’t meant to be Drift compatible with another species, Hermann, surely you know that”, and Hermann responds with some disparaging sentiment to the tune of 'never being able to work together in peace for 8 years of horrific and persistent proximity', so how on earth would electrical impulse matching technology and a healthy dose of reduced seizure threshold change that? 

(The truth is, Hermann knows that peace and harmony aren’t necessarily the same thing. Not when it comes to them.) 

It all ends in screaming, as usual, and Newt is just getting into their familiar back-and-forth rhythm, gesturing madly and his voice getting higher and shriller, when Hermann slams his cane onto the floor and yells, “Well why don’t we try it again with some  _ safe _ equipment instead of your  _ garbage _ excuse for a Pons system and sort this out with people who actually know what they’re talking about!”

And that’s how Hermann ends up in a circuitry suit, being checked over by Tendo Choi while various items of technology are attached, hooked up, strapped on, and plugged into them.

They are set up with skeleton versions of the suits that the Jaeger pilots wear. The Pons headgear is similar to the one they had worn not but a week ago; a black metal structure with circular clamps over their temples and one in the centre of their foreheads, a flexible, perfectly fitted metal strip aligned with the brainstem down the back of each of their heads and affixed by a small coil of insulated wire to the top of the spinal clamp. The spinal clamp runs down their backs, over the tight circuitry suit, and ends over the coccyx. Hermann thinks vehemently that he would like to be wearing something less clinging, but it was hard enough to get all the required equipment onto their bodies without an outer polycarbonate suit to screw the tendrils of piping filled with relay gel, the fibre optic cables, and the vitals monitoring equipment into. Fortunately, the wires are not numerous, heavy, or bulky, and their strategic positioning allows Hermann to lean on his cane while Tendo adjusts the headgear.

(He wrote the code for this; he understands the need for this wire, and that support, and that conductive lead, but it’s different when it’s on  _ him _ .)

Newton is doing the recommended pre-Drift stretches, mirroring a patient Mako who forces him to hold the stretch while a technician (Newt addresses her as Xian, even though everyone else in the room refers to her as Dr Gao) checks that the equipment isn’t going to restrict his movement, in case of seizure. Which is something that Hermann really doesn’t want to think about again. Dr Gao gives Newt a fond smile as he twitches into the next position; a twist of the neck to the left, bringing his impatient gaze to look at Hermann, and his face looks both excited and a little manic.

If all goes well, they will complete a stable neural handshake, take some readings, and practice moving in sync. If they are of low compatibility, the neural handshake will not take, or it will be unstable, and Tendo will cut them off, and Hermann will smirk and make snide comments about being right. If they are compatible, they will hold the neural handshake, Newt will probably be horribly invasive and sift through all of Hermann’s memories, end up chasing the R.A.B.I.T. and Hermann will have to systematically dig his colleague out of his brain.

Newt rattles something off to Dr Gao - Hermann catches the word ‘lithium’ and knows the medical technicians are working off the ‘Newt + Pons system = Seizure in exactly 50% of all known cases’ equation, and are weighing their countermeasures against potential interactions. Hermann knows for a fact that Newt hasn’t taken his medication in at least 9 days, so it’s hardly relevant. His serum levels are probably all over the place, and Hermann can inexplicably remember that it’s  _ hypo _ natraemia that means Newton probably shouldn’t restart them, despite the fact that Hermann has never studied pharmacology.

“I’m psyched,” Newt pipes up, crossing the room to join Hermann now that Dr Gao is finished.

Tendo claps him on the upper arm. “We’re all excited to see our K-science home team get in on the Drifting action, brother.” He half-grins at Hermann, who allows a small, familiar smile in response. Hermann hope he looks less nervous than he is.

“My hand’ll be over the off switch,” Tendo assures him, and reaches over until his left hand hovers over the red cut-off button, the rosary dangling from his wrist knocking against it lightly. He wiggles his fingers and raises his eyebrows to accentuate his point.

Now it is Newton’s turn under Tendo’s precise ministrations, having his headgear adjusted and re-adjusted to fit, aligning and plugging in. Hermann watches all this silently, Newton facing forward and away from him and still chattering away with Mako though a technician repeatedly reminds him to remain still. 

That’s Dr Geiszler to a ‘T’, thinks Hermann, and adjusts his own stance a little now he is permitted to move again. His hip aches and he wants to sit down, but sadly that won’t be an option until after this fiasco.

“Okay, we’ll fire it up and take some baseline readings, just you hang tight and we’ll have you all up in each other’s biz even more than usual in a mo.” Tendo gives a lecherous wink and starts flipping through hologram screens.

“How you doing, Hermann?” says Newt, almost quietly. He nods to where Hermann is favouring his hip in a way that would make his childhood physiotherapist grimace. “They could probably throw us some stools, huh?”

His leg does feel pretty bad. It must show on his face because before he can open his mouth to ask, Newt has already gestured to one of the watching J-Tech Medical team. “Could we sit down, maybe? Perch at least? Neither of us is getting any younger over here y’know.”

“Neither of us  _ are _ getting any younger, Newton,” Hermann corrects, out of habit. He isn’t annoyed – quite the opposite, when he is finally given a stool to sit on. He sits upright, careful not to jog the spinal clamp out of alignment.

“Glad you agree, old man,”  Newton teases. He rolls the office chair he’s been given closer to Hermann, perches on the edge of it, and begins bouncing his leg.

Mako stands in her uniform in front of them, slightly to the side of some of the machinery to avoid getting in the way. Now that she’s closer, Hermann can see she has dyed the tips of her hair green again.

“You know,” she says, and there is a certain mischievous lilt to her voice, though her face gives none of it away, “during early stages of drifting, it can help new partners stay in alignment if there is direct physical contact.” There is almost no pause, and then, “Holding hands, usually.”

Hermann scoffs, starts to say, “That’s never been proven, Miss Mori, and I assure you that will-” but he is cut off by Newt’s blunt fingers sliding over his palm and resting warm around his hand. He splutters.

Newt just grins and comments, “Listen to the voice of experience, Hermann. The lady has spoken.” 

Hermann makes an undignified  _ harrumph  _ sound under his breath, but the warm dry palm feels more solid to hold onto than the cold metal of the machinery attached to the rest of his body. He grips it tight.

Tendo and his J-tech team finish the relevant checks, and Hermann feels the machinery buzz to life around his body. This feels more invasive somehow, drifting using actual working equipment, no lowered threshold, just them, uncomfortably holding hands, in a room full of people watching them.

“Hermann,” says Newton from his right, “Do you remember much from the first drift? The memories?”

Hermann looks over. “A little,” he says gently, “I didn’t delve into your childhood, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Naw, no,” Newt replies, more high pitched, “I don’t mean that you would have wanted to, I just mean anything you overheard, y’know. Or saw.” He twitches, and shifts his hand around in Hermann’s grip.

“Never mind,” Newt continues, “I saw yours though – that shit was like a filing cabinet, all memories in a neat line,” -Tendo laughs once at this- “I’m sure you’ll steer away from the bunny just fine.”

\--

Silence. 

The Drift is silence, at first, then smatterings of conversation. 

_ ‘Sweetheart, it’s time to go’  _ __   
_ ‘-And welcome to Shatterdome: Anchorage’ _ __   
_ ‘Dr Gottlieb’ ‘Dr Geiszler’ _ __   
_ ‘Sir, I believe-‘ _ _   
_ __ ‘And I don’t want to hear another word about it!’

Around him, Hermann sees scenes from his lives as if projected onto panes of translucent glass. The confident strides of his father blend into the feet of a Jaeger stomping past, which blends into snow over the Shatterdome, which blends into a wide purple sky. Clouds turn into a crowded corridor, the faces of his university days into Newt’s lab team, his sister’s face into Newt’s mother’s, the double event, all that  _ death _ … then victory, a hug, a sense of loss reflected in two minds, in a thousand minds, in a hive mind-

(Someone is singing an old pop song off-key in the background.)

Throughout all the visions, a solid warm feeling to Hermann’s right side; a hand in his. He squeezes it, and with some effort, drags himself back to reality.

“Left hemisphere – in alignment,” reads the machine aloud. Hermann’s head swims, but he grins at Tendo, feeling accomplished. 

Tendo gives him a brief, tight nod, and a small smile, and then glances back to Newton. Newt’s eyes are darting about under rapid blinking, and though his hand is holding tightly to Hermann’s own, his breath is coming in short sharp bursts and the vitals monitor shows a dramatically raised heart rate. 

“His EEG’s clean, if a little erratic,” says Dr Gao, shifting the hologram of their matched real-time brain scans in the air so it’s more visible to Hermann. He almost wants to snap at the needless comment, then bites his tongue because Hermann Gottlieb, possessor of one (1) PhD in mathematics, never learned to interpret EEGs. That’s all second hand knowledge.

“No sign of seizure,” she continues, for Hermann’s benefit, “he’s chasing the R.A.B.I.T.” 

“Of course he is,” replies Hermann in the most scathing tone he can muster. “Let me see if I can’t…”

“Dr Gottlieb-!”

He lets the drift wash over him again, closing his eyes to a sky of blue, to his own memories mixed in and blended with Newt’s own, and concentrates to search for the bright pulse of Newt’s mind, whichever memory he’s gotten himself stuck in. With a jolt, he finds himself in the familiar grey tunnel of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, outside the doors of his own lab. He looks to the side and there is Newt, looking distinctly more put together (if that can ever be said of him) and with something a little… strange about him. Different. Less stressed perhaps?

Looking down, Hermann sees that his hand is still in Newton’s, and that he is being dragged forward by it. As the lab doors clank open, Newt starts to speak, and to Hermann it sounds as clear as if it were coming from his own mouth. That’s bad. Newt must be latching on to memories quite strongly.

“Now don’t worry,” says memory-Newt to drift-Hermann in a conspiratorial sort of way, “He might seem scary and old, but he’s actually nerdy and young – like me!” He laughs to himself, and turns to drift-Hermann again. “Less cool though.”

Hermann struggles to orient himself – this must be one of Newt’s memories which he is seeing from the outside – until he looks beyond memory-Newt’s face and sees his own younger, grumpier, but less-lined face staring back. Memory-Hermann is standing at the bottom of his ladder, and as memory-Newt drags drift-Hermann through the open doors and into the lab, starts towards them.

“Really, Doctor, you couldn’t have tidied up before crashing out last n- oh!” Hermann sees his own face crumple and then soften. “And who is this?”

Memory-Newt gestures with his free hand in a dramatic manner. “This is Stacker’s kid, Mako! Thought I’d give her a little tour of the facilities, see what she might be interested in.” He grins, and drift-Hermann is pulled in small steps not his own to the fumigation hood to see what lies within. 

Hermann remembers now. How Newton had brought a 13-year-old Mako into their lab – their dangerous, classified, often-highly-toxic lab – and shown her around like it was a tourist attraction. And yet – he had been quietly proud, seeing Newt explain in teen-friendly terms what their jobs were, and what his equipment did, and how Hermann’s ‘scribblings’ came together to make diagrams and predictions that Newt enthusiastically showed off to her. 

This memory makes sense – Newt was talking to Mako just before he entered the drift, and Hermann knows he became a little like a elder brother to her as she grew up. The emotional connection checks out. 

But Newt isn’t in this memory right now – Hermann is. Newt must have moved on.

The drift whirls and switches, and Hermann’s vision refocuses, once again looking at his own younger face, but this time from the side, and it’s dark. Drift-Hermann looks around with Newt’s eyes and sees Hong Kong spread out below him like so many thousands of blinking fairy lights. They’re on the roof of the Shatterdome. Newton’s hands hold the neck of a bottle of carefully-smuggled sake. He is listening to a younger, tipsy Hermann talk about his family.

“Karla, you know, she’s a talented linguist. Could always pick up another one. A- a language, I mean.” Memory-Hermann snorts softly, and drift-Hermann-through-Newt’s-memory feels a little thrill, though its meaning is unclear. “She could pick up any _ one _ too,” he continues, and laughs a little under his breath. “Highest charisma score in the family.”

Memory-Newt barks out a laugh. “You played D&D?”

“Pathfinder, actually.”

A bubble of joy and affection bursts in Hermann’s chest, and he’s certain it comes from Newton. “Should have pinned you for a tabletop nerd – math-based fantasy, strategy… Definitely a Hermann thing.”

Hermann remembers this conversation too, though more blurrily. Newton has clearly dwelled on the memory, given how strong it is. Hermann wonders why.

The bottle of sake remains in focus, and as the rest of the memory fades, he’s pouring it into a glass across the table from his own sister. Two plates of sushi sit half-eaten between them.  _ Strange _ , he thinks,  _ I’ve never-  _ except Newt’s voice cuts him off.

“Didn’t you know? I’m a nuisance, a bad joke of a colleague, an oversharing 12-year-old wielding a scalpel!” Hermann’s -no, Newton’s- hand waves about in front of him, shaking soy sauce from his chopsticks. 

He’s partially speaking in German, which is something Hermann hasn’t heard for a while.  Newt rarely speaks German to him on base – it’s not his first language, and up until a few years ago, the only language they shared with the other people in their lab was English. It’s a shame they never fell back into it, Hermann thinks, as he rather enjoyed mocking Newt for his (truly atrocious) accent.

“I can show you the HR complaints!”

Karla Gottlieb, 32, laughs aloud and undignified into her glass. “I’m sure they’re numerous.” She takes another bite of sushi, swallows it before she talks again (the mark of the offspring of one Lars Gottlieb). “Tell me, did you really keep specimens in the filing cabinets?”

“Ha, you bet I did!” Newt shovels crispy seaweed into his mouth, still talking all the while. “Only the sealed ones though,” he says conspiratorially. “Y’would’ve thought they were fresh entrails in a paper bag by the way Hermann carried on though.”

“I had guessed he was… embellishing somewhat.”

Drift-Hermann feels his mouth pull into a grin. “He does that.”

“He seems to have a lot of these stories about you, when he calls.” Karla looks curiously across the table, and if drift-Hermann were in control of the body he’s experiencing this through right now, he would draw back.

“That’s what happens when your lab partner is someone as exciting as me.” Memory-Newt gestures to himself with the hand holding the chopsticks, and sauce-coated fish slips out onto his shirt. “Aw, shit.”

Hermann spends what could be 5 seconds or 5 minutes watching memory-Newt dabbing ineffectually at his shirt with a wet tissue. Time spins weirdly in the drift. 

Karla shifts somewhat uncomfortably. “You know,” she starts. Hermann has not seen Karla uncomfortable since they were teenagers. “Hermann’s never had a lab partner for more than 6 months before.”

“Oh really?” Dab, dab, dab. “I wonder why?” Sarcastic smile. Dab, dab.

“I mean he’s never  _ wanted _ to stick around one lab partner for more than 6 months.”

The sticky brown stain isn’t going away, more like just being smeared around. “I’m shocked he’s stuck with me for this long then. God knows why he’s not just staying in Lima forever.”

Memory-Newt doesn’t look up, not really, but Hermann can see her smile as if Newton is the stupidest person on the planet. “Dr Geiszler,” she starts, again. “I’m fairly certain-”

The memory shifts a couple of centimetres to the left, and Hermann sees her mouth move, but no sound comes out. He can hear the beeping of the machines in the lab where his physical body is, where both their bodies are, and he figures Newton is about to switch memories again. This is his best chance to pry Newt out of here.

Drift-Hermann concentrates on the cool calm feeling of the Drift that he wants to fall back into, and on the warm solid core of the real Newton within this memory of him.

“Newton.” 

Memory-Newt blinks, and suddenly the subconjunctival haemorrhage is back in his eye, along with a couple of extra years of eye strain, and Karla has gone. In her place, Hermann looks across the table at him.

“Newton.”

Drift-Newt takes a breath. “Hermann.”

Hermann extends his right hand across the table. “Are you coming?” 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Yeah.” 

Newt takes his hand, squeezes it, and focuses on his physical body doing the same. Focuses on the twin push-pull of breath from either side of his brain, his lungs, the room they are in. His vision swims and he’s not sure if he’s seeing Hermann through the drift, or in real life. He sees tiny Mako and bigger, worried Mako superimposed on each other. He sees two lifetimes of memories that call him to re-experience them, each one tempting as a dip in a cool lake on a hot day. And all through that is Hermann’s hand in his, dragging him bodily through his own neurons back to reality. 

Newt screws his eyes shut.

He opens them again, tentatively. 

Beeping. White light with flickering yellow. 

“Oh, thank god.” That’s Tendo.

Newt looks up and sees Mako’s worried face smoothing out as she observes his EEG on the holoscreen. “Welcome back, Dr Geiszler.” She smiles at him then, a real smile.

“Right hemisphere – in alignment,” reads the machine.

Newton feels his sweaty left hand being adjusted in an equally-sweaty grip. Hermann grins wildly at him, and Newt feels it first, before he looks over to see it. That’s- that’s new.

“I was still right.” Hermann’s voice sounds wrecked.

Hermann apparently hears Newt’s thought. “Mental exhaustion from excising you from your own synapses will do that,” he says sarcastically.

“Doctors, are you alright to continue?” Dr Gao cuts in. Newt recognises that look. She’s leaning forward on the computer terminal behind the holoscreen, looking intrigued, but hiding it behind professional concern. 

Hermann turns to her. “Yes, I believe so.”

Newt raises his right arm experimentally and Hermann feels a corresponding tug in his own right arm. He grins at Newt again, and wiggles his foot, to which Newt twitches his own. 

“Hey!” says Newt, also grinning. 

They continue to feel out different motions, and Mako leads them in a series of physical and mental exercises which they do from the relative comfort of their seats. Newt feels an ache in his hip towards the end, and sees that Hermann has started to bounce his leg in the way Newt often does. As soon as Newt notices it though, so does Hermann, and he makes a conscious effort to relax. Newt feels a wave of gratitude and sends back a thrill of affection.

It’s odd, he thinks, to feel everything someone else is feeling, to experience a thought directed at you from outside as though it were your own. If their last drift had been a quick nod and a silent jump into the abyss, this is a drawn-out conversation over a long journey. An extension of every conversation they’ve ever had. An extension of one mind into two bodies. This is nothing like any other experiment Newt has ever done – he’s logging his research notes directly into his partner’s head, coming up with theories and dismissing them from the other side of the single entity they have become, feeling the joy from a satisfactory conclusion reflected back to him and magnified tenfold until they are both unable to hold in the excitement of discovery and simultaneously burst into laughter.

Throughout the odd session, Hermann does not let go of his hand.

\--

They retreat to Newt’s shitty couch in his tiny room.

“I didn’t know you liked sushi.” 

Newt screws up his face. “Uh yeah.” He pauses. “Shit, sorry. You were in Lima and she turned up for you, a- as a surprise, she was in town on a job and she wanted to- you know, to see you – and I, uh, I felt real bad that she’d taken time out of her job so we hung out – just for a bit.” Hermann lets him finish, waits to respond, and then Newt opens his mouth again. “She’s how I found out you liked Call of Cthulhu, you know.”

“Of all the things…” Hermann shakes his head a little and laughs gently. “I didn’t know she tried to visit. She told me later she came to Hong Kong but that I was away – I didn’t know that she went for lunch with you to try and …matchmake us.”

Newt boggles as if that hadn’t occurred to him. Perhaps before they drifted, Newt might have assumed Hermann couldn’t lip read. That Hermann hadn’t seen what Karla silently told him, all those years ago over sushi, when the memory glitched from stress, like a video tape where the same scene has been played over and over. Hermann wants to hear him admit it, though. 

“What did she say to you?” he prompts.

Newt huffs a small laugh, and doesn’t look at Hermann. “She said you were in love with me.”

Hermann blinks. It’s his memory now too, and that’s not- “That’s not exactly how she put it, but, hm. Yes.” He shuffles in place, realigning his hip and letting his back click, pushing further back into the seat.

“And are you?”

“Well-” Hermann clasps his hands in his lap. They’ve been in each other’s heads and Newt must have  _ felt _ the truth, and yet this is still difficult, embarrassing even, to admit. “I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Newt’s tone is joking but … vulnerable.

“Yes, I  _ suppose _ ,” snaps Hermann. “I do love you, Newton, quite a bit, if you must know.”

“Oh.” Newt awkwardly reaches a grubby hand out and grasps Hermann’s thin ones in the tight ball in his lap. He looks at their joined hands as he continues. “I sorta, tried to not think about it,” he admits, “I thought I was reading you wrong.” He taps his head. “I’m not great at understanding … people-stuff. Sometimes.” 

He has that self-deprecating half-grin on his face, when Hermann finally turns to look.

“Well, all the time,” Newt finishes.

Hermann blinks again, and finds himself mirroring the smile. 

“I’m going to kiss you now,” says Newt.

He does. It’s a little awkward because of how they’re sitting, but it’s also soft and perfect and Hermann’s hand tangles in Newt’s hair and Newt holds Hermann’s face with a hand on either side of his jaw, so really it’s entirely worth it.

“Oh, also, I love you too,” Newton says against his mouth some time later. “In case that wasn’t obvious.”

“In retrospect, it was.” Hermann replies, more than a little affectionately.

They don’t draw apart for a long time after that.

**Author's Note:**

> Phenytoin is used for the treatment of acute seizures caused by head trauma or neurosurgery, so I reasoned that this is what they would have on hand to treat Drift-induced seizing, though it’s a Real Fucky Drug.  
> Lithium is used to prevent and treat mania, and I’m fairly certain it says to use with caution in patients susceptible to seizures, so that’s why they would have to know about it seeing as we know Newt + Pons system = seizure in 50% of cases up to this point! Also I have the headcanon that Newt doesn’t like taking his medication for some reason, and I decided that reason would be – long term treatment with lithium has been associated with cognitive and memory impairment, so I can imagine Newt probably would take that as a risk of decreasing his intelligence. Plus, there aren’t really any external withdrawal symptoms for stopping taking lithium, so no one would have noticed really? Except it makes him more susceptible to relapse but THAT’S FOR ANOTHER FIC to discuss. Lithium is also a Real Fucky Drug that requires close monitoring so like … don’t be like Newt. Take your meds as prescribed and go for ur blood tests if you need them!
> 
> Hermann has had pain & joint problems from childhood and also finds it difficult to stand still for long periods of time because I also do and this is my sandpit so I’ll just be here projecting my own experiences onto my fav characters including the fact that he plays table top games and knows things abt pharmaceutical interactions. Fight me.
> 
> Newt has 6 doctorates, I’m sure he picked up how to differentiate different types of seizure on an EEG somewhere.
> 
> I flick between ‘Newt’ and ‘Newton’ because in this fic, Hermann himself is switching between them in how he thinks of Newt in his own head, not because I forgot.
> 
> Follow me on tigersinlondon on tumblr if you love nonsense.


End file.
